Sunday, May 15, 2011

Political Violence in Oaxaca

An armed group ambushed and murdered nine indigenous people and wounded ten more in the city of Santiago Choapam, Oaxaca --in the region bordering Veracruz-- informed the secretary of public security of the state, Marco Tulip López Escamilla. The cause, according to some of those affected, was a post-electoral conflict about which the authorities had already been alerted.

The group of people that was attacked on the highway was on its way to the municipal center where they were to join an assembly in which officials from the State Electoral Institute and the Oaxaca Citizen Participation were to install the Municipal Electoral Council, which would dictate the rules for extraordinary elections, because those from last year will annulled after the Federal Electoral Tribunal determied that various political rights violations had been committed.